For human groups to grow from small, intimate communities to the huge interconnected societies we know now, people needed to be willing to cooperate with strangers. Religion might have played a big role.

Behavioral economists have revolutionized the standard view of human nature. No longer are people presumed to be purely selfish, only acting in their own interest. Hundreds of experiments appear to show…

That’s one hell of a thatch - up to a tonne of weaver nest.
sara_joachimJuly 8, 2014

How can animals, from ants to people, form social groups with individuals working successfully together for a common good? So Charles Darwin asked in 1859, perceiving the existence of cooperative behaviour…